Election Monitors have now confirmed that the vehicle of TNA Candidate at the Northern Provincial Council election, Sajanthan was fired upon outside a polling booth in Varani near Kodikamam in the Jaffna District.

The Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) said they had confirmed the report with officials in the area who had heard the gunshots.

The incident had taken place outside the polling booth at the Varani Maha Vidyalam which is right opposite an army camp, CaFFE said.

At least 10 shots were fired at his vehicle and that of his supporters, Sajanthan said. He said that his supporters who had turned around to look as the vehicles were fleeing the scene had confirmed uniformed soldiers were shooting at them.

The TNA candidate claimed he had rushed to the scene upon hearing that the TNA’s Urban Council Vice Chairman had been confined by soldiers in civil clothing who were engaged in attempts to prevent voters from reaching polling booths in the area.

“By the time we got there the Vice Chairman had been rescued by TNA MP Suresh Premachandra,” he explained. The civil clothed groups were roaming around outside the polling booth chasing away voters.

Sajanthan and his supporters had made it a habit of walking around in areas of Thenamarachchi where groups of men in civil clothing that people of the area claimed were soldiers were chasing voters away from voting stations and filming the groups with his phone camera causing them to flee, TNA officials say.

Sajanthan had attempted the same thing outside the Varani MV polling station when he said two of the civil clothed men had run into the army camp next door. He says suddenly his group realised they were being fired and got into their vehicles – one white jeep and a white van – and fled the scene.

They had noticed one bullet mark on the van, Sajanthan said.